Lee Jae Myung's Ironic Gifts at APEC
By Tom Kagy | 02 Nov, 2025

Trump and Xi received ironic ribbing in the form of gifts from the S. Korean President of a golden crown and a go board.

As Korean President Lee Jae Myung inspected the pair of Xiaomi phones presented as gifts by China's President Xi Jinping, Lee asked Xi, "How is the communication security?"

The go board presented to President Xi Jinping by S. Korean President Lee Jae Myung.  (Reuters photo)

This prompted laughter from Xi and officials from both nations. 

The laugh shared by Xi and Lee was the first public acknowledgement by any leader that gifts exchanged at APEC might have an ironic or humorous intent.

"You can check if there's a backdoor," was Xi's response, not particularly witty but factual: backdoors planted into an electronics device would be easily detected, so aren't actually a realistic threat. 

Lee laughed and clapped his hands before they proceeded with other gifts. 

Of course the joke about a possible backdoor in the Xioami phones was a pointed reference to the US tendency to engage in "national security" hysteria over fears that Chinese electronics imports and popular apps like TikTok might provide ways to compromise the security and privacy of Americans.  

Anyone with technical sophistication would understand that nothing would be more stupid or commercially suicidal than embedding backdoor code into electronics sold in global commerce.  Not only would such code be easily detected and neutralized, but adding any such code would cost the offending brand permanent loss of global market share and credibility.

The paranoia behind US concerns about "backdoors" implanted in electronics is also reflected in a recent proposal by the Trump administration that advanced chips from Nvidia, AMD and others sold abroad be equipped with tracking and positioning functions, forcing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to reassure prospective buyers of Nvidia GPUs that they contained no "backdoors".

The gift that Lee had given Xi was a fancy go (baduk in Korean) board.  The gift was likely intended to convey two ironic messages.  

The first refers to the fact that go is the ultimate strategy game.  The more farsighted and subtle strategist generally wins.  In this connection, the gift was a compliment to Xi for having devised his successful rare-earths counter to Trump's unilateral declaration of trade war by imposing arbitrary trade-destroying tariffs.  

By the time leaders had arrived last week for the APEC conference in Gyeongju, the world had become aware that Xi's counter move had knocked the wind out of Trump's sails.  Given that it will take at least four or five years for the US and other advanced nations to secure alternative sources of rare-earth magnets at scale, and that Chinese rare-earth magnets currently account for about 98% of the global supply, Xi had clearly put Trump on notice that any more trade bullying would be met with debilitating blocks on exports to US manufacturers of everything from EVs to consumer electronics to fighter jets to missile batteries and space vehicles. 

But the go-board gift also contained a jibe at Xi's territorial bullying in much of the South China and East China Seas.  S. Korea itself had recently been forced to protest China's use of undersea barricades to block Korean access to areas of the Yellow Sea generally considered international waters.

Lee's biggest ironic gift was reserved for Trump — a replica of a gold crown worn by kings of Korea's Shilla dynasty.  Taken at face value it was an acknowledgement of Trump's success in having achieved rule by fiat over the United States.  While that might be taken as a compliment by Trump himself, for Koreans who hold intense pride in their young but highly-functioning democracy which booted Lee's predecessor for declaring martial law, it looked like trolling.  So Lee sought to temper the crown by conferring on Trump a medal for the Royal Order of Mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon — Korea's national flower), S. Korea's highest civilian honor.  But to all Koreans, including the editorial boards of various news outlets, the main message was ironic derision for a bully acting as a king.

Especially when combined with the "No-Kings - Trump Not Welcome" protests that followed him to Seoul, then to Gyeongju, the Shilla replica crown was clearly in itself an ironic protest by a close ally and trading partner that added to the growing global derision directed at Trump and his antics.